Twenty kilometers (12 miles) from England’s Kent and Essex coasts, the world’s largest offshore wind farm has started harvesting the breezes over the sea. Located in the Thames Estuary, where the River Thames meets the North Sea, the London Array has a maximum generating power of 630 megawatts (MW), enough to supply as many as 500,000 homes.

The wind farm became fully operational on April 8, 2013. Twenty days later, the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on the Landsat 8 satellite captured this image of the area. The second image is a closeup of the area marked by the white box in the top image. White points in the second image are the wind turbines; a few boat wakes are also visible. The sea is discolored by light tan sediment—spring runoff washed out by the Thames.

England is in a peculiar situation due to their geographic location limiting their ability to expand outward and collect homegrown resources. As the first world nations push towards a “greener” and more sustainable energy producing ability, the effects of trying to help the Earth, both positive and negative need to be taken into effect. As some opponents to the wind farm have brought up, it can negatively affect the bird species in the area. What matters most? England’s attempt to wean themselves off of unsustainable resource dependence in order to enhance the future generations may be seen as a positive but with every action, there is a reaction.

The issue that comes up as we humans try to better our relationship with the Earth in an effort not to destroy our home, paired with our lust for a healthy and non-apocalyptic future that we can still absorb ourselves into social media – do we negatively impact local animal species for our greater cause or do we limit our footprint even if it takes a viable option for the enhancement of our own resource dependence off the table. I guess if the long term effect on the birds and the resulting issues of their no longer presence was fully and responsibly researched and the pros and cons were compared to each other, then time will tell if the wind farm does more harm or good.

Technology is changing the shopping habits of buyers. Compete recently conducted a survey that reported a rapid increase in the number of people using their mobile devices for shopping Online shopping which u can buy from home easily with lots of designs of cloths and new technology mobile phones without going out for shopping just click here to go eaZy http://shopdeer.blogspot.in/

A NASA-led science team has created an accurate, high-resolution map of the height of Earth's forests.

The map will help scientists better understand the role forests play in climate change and how their heights influence wildlife habitats within them, while also helping them quantify the carbon stored in Earth's vegetation.

Scientists from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.; the University of Maryland, College Park; and Woods Hole Research Center, Falmouth, Mass., created the map using 2.5 million carefully screened, globally distributed laser pulse measurements from space. The light detection and ranging (lidar) data were collected in 2005 by the Geoscience Laser Altimeter System instrument on NASA's Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite (ICESat).

"Knowing the height of Earth's forests is critical to estimating their biomass, or the amount of carbon they contain," said lead researcher Marc Simard of JPL. "Our map can be used to improve global efforts to monitor carbon. In addition, forest height is an integral characteristic of Earth's habitats, yet is poorly measured globally, so our results will also benefit studies of the varieties of life that are found in particular parts of the forest or habitats."

The map, available at http://lidarradar.jpl.nasa.gov, depicts the highest points in the forest canopy. Its spatial resolution is 0.6 miles (1 kilometer). The map was validated against data from a network of nearly 70 ground sites around the world.

The researchers found that, in general, forest heights decrease at higher elevations and are highest at low latitudes, decreasing in height the farther they are from the tropics. A major exception was found at around 40 degrees south latitude in southern tropical forests in Australia and New Zealand, where stands of eucalyptus, one of the world's tallest flowering plants, tower much higher than 130 feet (40 meters).

The researchers augmented the ICESat data with other types of data to compensate for the sparse lidar data, the effects of topography and cloud cover. These included estimates of the percentage of global tree cover from NASA's Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer on NASA's Terra satellite, elevation data from NASA's Shuttle Radar Topography Mission, and temperature and precipitation maps from NASA's Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission and the WorldClim database. WorldClim is a set of freely available, high-resolution global climate data that can be used for mapping and spatial modeling.

In general, estimates in the new map show forest heights were taller than in a previous ICESat-based map, particularly in the tropics and in boreal forests, and were shorter in mountainous regions. The accuracy of the new map varies across major ecological community types in the forests, and also depends on how much the forests have been disturbed by human activities and by variability in the forests' natural height.

"Halloween and Thanksgiving are just around the corner and pumpkins are already showing up at roadside stands. Jack o’lanterns, decorative displays and pumpkin pies are the main destinies of most pumpkins in the United States. Elsewhere in the world, however, the pumpkin is nearly exclusively considered a food crop or animal feed."

I have been a long-time fan of pumpkin coffee, and tomorrow I will probably have some with my cousins and family... Some areas of Asia allow consumption of dogs, other areas of the US allow consumption of roadkill, and that is different from what most people in RI are used to... So I guess, it's not really my business what other people and countries do with their pumpkin crops, as long as it doesn't negatively affect other people. My neighbor has won some prizes, I think 3rd place in RI for largest pumpkin contests, which is pretty cool, because for several months, you can see their pumpkin garden from my backyard. Those pumpkins are enormous, and made me wonder if there was anything being done to make the modified pumpkins more usable in food. I know GMOs are a touchy issue, but to feed the starving people around the world, you have to wonder if one pumpkin at 2000 lbs could feed a village of people. Lots of people that don't like GMOs probably do unhealthy things in other ways, so their huge activism movements really boggle me. Labeling GMOs is one thing, but stopping genetic modifications seems as controversial as starting them, especially when some people can benefit from them. Whatever, I guess pumpkins are cool for whatever people want to do with them, including smashing them... this week on RIC's campus I saw a smashed pumpkin. The only thing that really popped into my head was not "what a waste," or "oh, those delinquents," but rather "that seems fun." I did assume though, that no one was hurt by the smashing of the pumpkin...

Although you wouldn't think it there are many different countries and specific regions that demonstrate the perfect cropping land and fertilization process to grow pumpkins. Out of the US power house pumpkin growing Illinois is named number 1. Along side California, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvainnia, Mississippi. But lets travel abroad to Africa, now me personally I wouldnt think that there are alot of pumpkin patches in Africa but there are many different places in Africa that pumpkins are grown. SOme of these places are Egypt with (690,000) and then there is South Africa with (378,776). I found these numbers quite interesting because one wouldn't think that there are pumpkin patches in Africa.

This is an interesting way to graph out the urban footprints of various cities from around the world. This also shows how the United States has a number of the largest urban centers in the world. Along the top, New York, Chicago, LA, and Miami are massive compared to cities like Hong Kong. This shows how in the United States there are massive amounts of urban growth. Even in China where their population is one of the worlds biggest, Hong Kong a major city only has 7.1 million. In the United States, for the past century cities have been growing and this graph shows that.

These visuals really help to show that the size of a city doesn't necessarily correspond with it's population. Many years ago the trend was the larger the city in turn it would posses a larger population than a physically smaller city. Today this no longer holds true, in fact many smaller cities vastly out populate large sprawling cities. Most of these mega-cities in Asia and Latin America are incredibly over build and densely packed surrounded by miles of slums.

This interactive map documents where 443 million people around the world get there water (although the United States data is by far the most extensive). Most people can't answer this question. A recent poll by The Nature Conservancy discoverd that 77% of Americans (not on private well water) don't know where their water comes from, they just drink it. This link has videos, infographics and suggestions to promote cleaner water. This is also a fabulous example of an embedded map using ArcGIS Online to share your geospatial data with a wider audience.

I was definitely unaware of where my drinking water came from. This is nice, user-friendly map... Hopefully it gets updated regularly, as it will be interesting to see how these sources change over time.

That was cool. Thanks for sharing. I have a new fun tool for virtual storm chasing. I'm not as adventurous as I used to be. Is there any chance that there is an international version? We had a big typhoon in Asia this past week. Crazy weather.

This interactive map is a 'nearly live' dynamic display of United States winds patterns (speed, direction and broad spatial context). Click on the image to see the animated, large version. Super cool!!

If you've never seen the Google Earth Blog, this post is a good primer to the educational possibilities that this technology opens up to teachers. It is not just for geography teachers; it can be a visualization tool for any subject that has real-world applications that take place somewhere.

Google Earth is an amazing way to teach children of all ages (and adults for that matter) about the geography of the Earth. It is such an abstract way of conveying geographic concepts. What an amazing teaching tool....and as an added bonus, it's FREE!!

Esri's GIS (geographic information systems) mapping software helps you understand and visualize data to make decisions based on the best information and analysis. (RT @Esri: #EsriUC--Where ideas are born!

If All of Earth's Water was put into Single Sphere, from the USGS Water Science School...

"This picture shows the size of a sphere that would contain all of Earth's water in comparison to the size of the Earth. The blue sphere sitting on the United States, reaching from about Salt Lake City, Utah to Topeka, Kansas, has a diameter of about 860 miles (about 1,385 kilometers) , with a volume of about 332,500,000 cubic miles (1,386,000,000 cubic kilometers). The sphere includes all the water in the oceans, seas, ice caps, lakes and rivers as well as groundwater, atmospheric water, and even the water in you, your dog, and your tomato plant."

Water is also tied up in hydrated minerals in the rocks of the earth's crust. While not "free" it is still significant and is occasionally freed through subduction and volcanic activity. Furthermore, the earth's mantle may contain even more water than the rest combined! So, maybe the Single Sphere should be larger by more than the cube root of 2, or about 1,083 miles in diameter. See mantle water data at http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/03/0307_0307_waterworld.html

A colourful summer marine plankton bloom fills much of the Baltic Sea in this Envisat image. Plankton are microscopic marine plants that drift on or near the surface of the sea, by far the most abundant type of life found in the ocean.

"One of our colleagues and leaders in spatial thinking in education, Dr. Diana Stuart Sinton, has written a book entitled The People’s Guide to Spatial Thinking, along with colleagues Sarah Bednarz, Phil Gersmehl, Robert Kolvoord, and David Uttal. As the name implies, the book provides an accessible and readable way for students, educators, and even the general public to understand what spatial thinking is and why it matters. It “help[s] us think across the geographies of our life spaces, physical and social spaces, and intellectual space.” Dr. Sinton pulls selections from the NRC’s Learning to Think Spatially report and ties them to everyday life. In so doing, she also provides ways for us in the educational community to think about teaching these concepts and skills in a variety of courses. Indeed, as she points out, spatial thinking is particularly essential within science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, as well as geography." - See more at: ESRI's GIS Education Community blog.

If you haven't discoverd "Strange Maps," consider this your online introduction to a great blog that explores some of the more interesting cartographic and geospatial forms of representation and themes that you never thought you would see mapped out. This particular post is about map tattoos (with many pictures). For more, see Strange Maps.

"Schools used to be the heart of a neighborhood or community. Children and not a few teachers could walk to class, or to the playground or ball field on the weekend. This was relatively easy to do, because the schools were placed within, not separated from, their neighborhoods. They were human-scaled and their architecture was not just utilitarian, but signaled their importance in the community. Now it has become hard to tell one from a Walmart or Target."

What better way to demonstrate the concepts of urban sprawl, automobile-dependent city planning and economies of scale than by analyzing the very geographic context of our schools themselves? This is a very nicely arranged photo essay that most could spark conversation and would foster some discussion on how best to plan neighborhoods and spatially arrange the city.

The natural landscapes shown as captured by satellite imagery is as beautiful as anything artists have ever created. Some of the colors shown in the video may seem otherworldy. Most of those color anomalies are due to the fact that remotely sensed images have more information in them than just what we see in the visible portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. Some of these images are processed to show different bands so we can visually interpret data such as what is in the near infra-red band, skewing the color palette.

The graphic was not connected to the article. It was linked on a PBS facebook page and I linked the juxtaposition of the graphic and the NY Times article. Here is the FB page: https://www.facebook.com/EarthTheOperatorsManual.Page Personally, an entire century as a baseline of comparison does not feel like cherrypicking data. True the Earth is an incredibly complex system that controlling for all variables is in essence impossible, but denying that the system has changed seems foolish to me. Why has the system changed? I'm okay with that being a reasonable debate worthy of academics.

The NDVI (Normalized Digital Vegetation Index) is on of the primary methods for detecting healthy vegetation using satellite imagery. This also serves as a useful way to distinguish between distinct ecological and agricultural regions and the temporal patterns of planting seasons.

In geography, the antipodes of any place on Earth is its antipodal point; that is, the region on the Earth's surface which is diametrically opposite t...

I know that most Americans have learned at an early age that if you dig a hole through the center of the Earth, you'll end up in China. Geologic and impossibilities aside, most Americans would actually end up in the Indian Ocean as displayed by this clever pairing up maps that shows the user the Antipode of any given place on Earth. Try it out! http://www.antipodemap.com/

Interesting website to show the accuracy of where someone will actually end up by digging a hole. While on the website I dug a hole in Portugal on the original map and ended up in the Tasman Sea located near New Zealand, on the antipode map. Out of curiosity I then dug a hole in China on the original map and ended up in Argentina on the antipode map.

Mark V's comment,September 5, 2012 7:46 AM

I dug a whole in Rhode Island and came out off the coast of southwestern Australia near Perth.

Sharing your scoops to your social media accounts is a must to distribute your curated content. Not only will it drive traffic and leads through your content, but it will help show your expertise with your followers.

Integrating your curated content to your website or blog will allow you to increase your website visitors’ engagement, boost SEO and acquire new visitors. By redirecting your social media traffic to your website, Scoop.it will also help you generate more qualified traffic and leads from your curation work.

Distributing your curated content through a newsletter is a great way to nurture and engage your email subscribers will developing your traffic and visibility.
Creating engaging newsletters with your curated content is really easy.